You were all I'd ever known
by soughtstory
Summary: Life is a jarring thing, full of stumbles and commas and dents; but god, is it not a repetitive thing? reincarnation au.


Life is a jarring thing, full of stumbles and commas and dents; but _god,_ is it not a repetitive thing? reincarnation au.

* * *

 **WARNING** \- honestly, this is a half baked idea i got on the drive home from my grandparents 'cause my cousin was speeding, so it'll probably be pretty short. if you want to start from the canon beginning, read from the bottom to the top here, but i recommend reading it normally. Also, here comes those line breaks i love.

 **UPDATE -** i wrote the first part to this when my granddad was alive and then finished it after he was gone.

so this is dedicated to you, Pops. I'll see you again, and in the next life, we'll play chess.

* * *

When the boy in the bed wakes up, Killua grins.

 _It's nice to see you again, Gon._

* * *

When the boy in the bed doesn't wake up, Killua feels like he's staring into another life.

Another life filled with falling, with power in bursts, with islands and whips and eyes turned scarlet. The two beside him clutch through their own memories, scratch away at w _hy, why, why_ their hearts stumble in fear whenever his breathing jars, scratches against the remnants of a puzzle-piece rib cage. He can feel his palms itch, something electric burning through his spine when he moves to straighten the sheets, when he turns to look at the others. Strangers, but not quite. Not yet.

Killua tries to ignore the way the doctors duck their gaze, and the nurses frame ellipsis in their mouths when they ask how he's doing, if he'll wake up. If Killua will ever get to see those eyes again, framed with a sunlight and darkness he hadn't quite known yet. Why those eyes had turned him into an ache, had pressed his mind into a kaleidoscope of things he didn't know but did, he would never understand. Not until he saw those eyes again.

When the other two leave, Killua is in a kilter swirl. The world stumbles, tilts, and for a moment, he is a Zoldyck again. Child of assassin's and blood crusted nails, trapped in a house that spanned forever, even all the way into the hunter exam. His brother's needles in him. His mother's claws in his shoulder. But ... a hand in his. And it is _warm,_ so warm that Killua forgets all of the cold, all its dreadful creep into his bones.

When Killua looks to the boy, he's tossed back into a war, helplessly trailing after that mess of hair to look for the man that left hollows in him. That stole to the ocean before he had even found a bed at Mito-san and Granny Abes. He can see the dark tunnels of the hunter exam, the long spire of a sharpened tower, his family's chains. Killua had forgotten so easily why he had wanted to trail into that mind forever, ask why the boy why he did what he did, why he pulled him from the wreckage with nothing but a smile and a hand.

Slowly, Killua curls in on himself. Killua is not an assassin in this life, didn't need to conquer a game full of greed, nor drag his brothers influence by the handful out of him. In this life, Killua is so weak compared to his former self - all awkward growths and heartbreaking crushes and a family full of murder. So he can accept it when he begins to coil, to curl his arms around the boys shoulders as he sleeps and sob. He sobs and sobs, the leftover mosaic of a love so deep it could pull mountains apart turning him raw.

In another life, Killua had refrained from doing this when Gon laid in a hospital bed. But now, he supposes, he can do his best this time.

* * *

"COME ON! YOU HAVE TO LET ME SEE HIM!"

"Sir, I'm sorry, but only fami -"

"I DON'T _CARE;_ I NEED TO SEE HIM."

Once, Killua thought he was a God. The pedestal child. The one the family had looked to when continuing its line and for a while, Killua had reveled. Had grabbed it by the handful and shoved it close to his heart, making it all he was and all he strived for - to be the golden child his parents wanted. But as Killua grew, became tall enough to steal money from pockets and counters and knew its worth, he began to change, became a pocket of space with a needle at his throat. He became aware, and aware he stayed.

But it was always missing, how a piece seemed to alude his sharpened mind. He pressed the worries deeper, those wayward dreams full of islands and whales and fishing rods further into the back alleys of himself. As much as he wanted to, he didn't go digging into the meat of himself to find why he felt to empty, why a part of him rang with church bells whenever he brushed against it, whenever he tried to name it.

He hadn't silenced it until he'd seen those eyes, felt that hand - and it was only one, the boy only had _one_ \- wrap around his and drag him out of the pain in his stomach, in his chest. Even with hell fire behind him, with smoke swallowing their frames and people worrying, people calling up and trying to find a way to clean this mess, Killua had never seen something so kind and beautiful and deadly in one person. Not even in the careful hands of his father, or the way his mother applied her makeup or how Illumi's hand always found him when he tried to leave. Never had he seen something that silenced him quite like this.

Suddenly, it's an entirely different hand on his shoulder. "I've got him, sorry for the trouble."

"Hey, what the hell -" Killua is steered away from the relieved receptionist, turned as a man lowers and - oh. A pain shudders through his heart at his face, familiar and distant all at once, remembering a briefcase and a pocket knife too small for his large hands. But the man in front of him is older, is worn and weary but just as kind. he even wears his glasses.

"Look kid," he says, leveling his gaze with his and Killua wonders if he ever achieved his dream, "we all want to see him but right now, the medical staff and his family are under a lot of stress. This is a really difficult time, so if you could let them do your job, I'm sure they'll let you see him. And if not, then you can thank him in your own way when he gets out of here."

Behind them, a blond with scarlet tinged eyes from the gash in his head nods, though his expression frames puzzle and Killua knows why. Knows that this world isn't their home and they don't belong and the boy in the hospital bed should be in a hospital bed, but should be on Whale Island or looking for Ging or -

"Excuse me," a voice that reminds Killua of honey and sandstorms splits through the silence with all the might of a shotgun. At the entry way to the hospital rooms, a woman stands, all aged and kind and firm. her hands fold in front of her skirts, pink-tinged hair pulled back into that ponytail she has favored for lifetimes. "Are you the boys he saved?"

"Yes," says the blond, standing with a grace so familiar it makes Killua's bones ache. The child tries to not meet her eyes, tries not to see those same ones that had stared at him through a crunch of metal and a blown apart glass window. He wonders if she can feel that pull too, if she has felt it towards the boy in the hospital bed his entire life. "We don't mean to make any trouble for you we just ... we want to thank him for what he did."

And she smiles, sweeter than sunlight. "I think he'd like that when he wakes up. Follow me."

* * *

And that pain is so thick in his palms, his breathing, he wonders if it could choke him. The physical pain doesn't hurt too much, but the one he's held, like a broken cup in his hands, chokes him with smoke. Like a toothache, Killua can feel its pulse through him, like ripples across water and he's remembering things that never happened, that shouldn't have been possible, that existed in stories and folklore and games. But it's so familiar, that Killua could reach out and touch, could pull it back into him if he only had the courage.

The memories trick themselves through his mind, all sneak and misdirection where whenever he tries to stifle them, they push against the barriers. But they shake, for memories are tentative things and brittle when Killua finally presses into them, sees the world explode behind his eyes in the fall of a palace and a world tree. He sees the hunters that followed them into a war, the ants that curled around a selfish king, the girl that ended it all before it began. He sees Alluka and her careful hands, he sees his family hunting them down just as they always have and always will.

And Killua doesn't know what to do. His body caves in on itself, collapsing and rebuilding, realizing why he's felt so wrong in this flesh for years. Why he always wondered where the scars went, why lightning fascinated him so much, why his yo-yos are lighter than they should've been. But he doesn't know what to _do_ with all this, how he should go around approaching it. For Killua is a child, and unlike their first life, this world doesn't allow children to die for their beliefs unless it benefits them.

Its small when it happens, but he is so glad for it.

Beside him, as the ambulance scales through the city, the siren call the only sound, the blond touches his arm. It's light and noninvasive, kind where he should've been hateful, but the blond still smiles through the pain. The gash in his brow is patched but the leftovers ring around his eye, blossoming it with scarlet. The sight is enough to make Killua flinch, as he remembers a night where the blond and another visited a canyon and only the blond returned.

"I know," he says, full of sigh and tire, enough that he sounds far older than what he is. And he wonders, if their world is not the only one that forces children into adults before they are ready. "I've been feeling like I've lost something for years too."

* * *

Oh _god,_ those _eyes -_

 _Where have I seen you before? Where have I known you?_

* * *

Oh god and Killua can't breathe.

Oh god and Killua can't hear.

Oh god and - there's a hand and eyes and heartbeat next to him, pulling, pulling, pulling until suddenly, there isn't even a god. Just a boy.

 _Oh god, who are you?_

* * *

He doesn't see it coming, the other car. Too engrossed in the window, Killua hardly even feels it when the car begins to topple, begins to greet the concrete far faster than he would like. And all he sees after is the boys face, endlessly caught in a terror-stricken smile.

* * *

"Oi, Gotoh! We'll be late if you don't run this lig - _seriously!?_ "

"I apologize, Master Killua, but we must adhere to the law, and I know your parents would not be impressed if I managed to get us into trouble with the law," says his driver and Killua just groans, all annoyance and petty anger in his bloodstream. A small huff drags itself out of his mouth as he throws himself back into the seat, letting his gaze wander to his phone where Alluka texts him pictures of the dogs in the park, asking Canary to take selfies and pose with them, a friend called Knuckle watching over her alongside Canary. He laughs when there's a particularly silly one, turning his heart melted and warm.

Its a second, but a second is all he needs to look up as another care drives down to stop at the light. There's two women in the front but in the back, there's a boy. dark, with spiked hair and a wide mouth as he giggles at something in the other car, one of the other women giggling with him. He's practically bouncing in his seat, all endless energy and height and sunlight. There's an aura that surrounds him, blinding hot and inviting that has Killua sitting up, has him looking directly out of the window too him.

And there's something, _there,_ at the base of his skull. If he could _just_ reach it -

As if he could feel Killua's electric gaze, the boy runs. Across his round features, there's freckles borrowed from days in sunlight and a small scar on the edge of his nose, though Killua swears he wasn't looking that deeply. There's a moment there, a lapse where all there is is silence, just staring at each other until the boy shuffles in his seat, moving closer to the window and begins to breath over it, huffing air until condensation covers the inside of the window. And soon, he's writing.

" _Hi! I'm Gon!_ "

Killua blinks, before his mouth begins to split with a smile at the hopeful grin the boy in the car sheds towards him. Killua puts his hand over his mouth to stifle the laugh, ignoring the swell in his heart, the way something feels right and familiar and needed right now. He blames it on how his sister melted his heart before he looked across the road, tries not to give this boy too much credit.

He doesn't even wonder why he thinks, _idiot, you should already know that I know you,_ and begins to write back.


End file.
